Shake Table mk 1 - Red's Toyland

When my kid’s elementary school hit the earthquakes section of their geology unit — and it happened to have a genuinely awesome science teacher running the show — it felt only natural to reach out and offer to build them a shake table.

This was my first crack at one (hence the “mk 1”), so I kept it grounded: wood, and a design loosely modified from a few options I found online.

The finished shake table — a plywood top plate on a wooden base, with a black hand crank up front and white coupling springs on the sides

How it works

The motion comes from a hand crank turning a central shaft with a wheel on it. The wheel couples to the table top through springs, so as you crank, the top gets driven side to side in a roughly sinusoidal motion — with just enough give in the springs that it feels like ground rather than a rigid slider.

The black crank handle mounted on the front of the base

Underside view of the cam wheel and its offset pin, linked up to the top plate, at the top of its travel

The same mechanism rotated to the bottom of its travel

Close-up of the offset coupling — a stack of washers setting the throw on the cam shaft

To let the top plate slide cleanly over the base, I used lengths of PVC pipe as roller bearings between the two. Cheap, smooth, and easy for the school to replace if one ever wore out.

Looking into the gap between the top plate and the base, where the PVC roller bearings ride

The top plate itself got a grid of holes, each fitted with a 1/4-20 threaded insert, so whatever was under test could be bolted down solidly anywhere on the surface.

The base with the top plate removed, showing the internal cross-bracing

A bit over-built

Being real, the whole thing came out heavy. Probably over-engineered. But the weight earned its keep — it damped the sharper peaks the springs wanted to throw, knocking down some of the higher-frequency modes and leaving a cleaner, more believable shake.

Here it is doing its thing:

Off to school

Since this was a donation — and I was hoping it would survive a few years of enthusiastic ten-year-olds — I sent it along with a support kit of spare parts.